I was about to make a thread about it tomorrow, but you beat me to it. This topic made me think hard about pestilence on Athas. Parasites are one concern, but others also mentioned the sanitation problems (especially with ‘dirty occupations’). How often do lethal digestive diseases hit the cities? Compost workers in aseptic conditions just beg for typhoid outbreaks, especially if they work with human waste. This could quickly spread all over the city.
Out of sudden, it made me think of another reason why some people would decide to live in small villages: Because the cities are regularly hit not just by famine, but also by rampant epidemics of typhoid and other diseases. Working your own land (including your own compost processing) could give you some (illusion of) control over it, while living in a smaller community may make the villagers feel safer from the spreading of the disease.
I think it’s a mixture of all of the above, plus good/bad luck. Composting would be a department that affects both famine and pestilence problems, so I imagine the SMs would consider it strategically important. Of course, how it actually goes depends on the templars, but if you’re a templar responsible for this process - you don’t want to foul that up. Villages, on the other hand… That’s another story. Just imagine a band of escaped gladiators trying their luck at composting, with zero knowledge!
On the other hand, I always felt that mortality on Athas was very high, often because of what we’d describe as ‘bad luck’. People die for all sorts of reasons beyond their control. Having a high Fortitude save certainly helps, but I don’t think Athasians are necessarily ‘made of sterner stuff’. Many of them simply live short and die young, for a lot of reasons. Parasites sure fit that parttern - they’re the sort of invisible threat most Athasians can’t really protect themselves from.
Oh yes. If Dark Sun 5e. ever becomes a thing, every class should have a ‘Made of tougher stuff’ feature at level 3. ‘You instantly get rid of all digestive parasites in your body and gain immunity to mundane parasites. Parasites specifically mentioned in Dark Sun rulebooks are not affected.’
One point that should be made is only PCs start at level 3 in 2e. Slaves, random thugs, apprentices, and others sheltered from the Terrors of Athas are called out as being levels 1-2. Though that does imply bandits, nomads, dune traders, gladiators, etc are all levels 3+.
And then 4 months later while looking for a fully statted out Templar in the 3.5 rule book, on pg 61 I find one for a sample encounter that wants to capture PCs to collect night soil for him.
“Teokas is a mid‐level templar assigned to
collection of the night soil buckets from the slave pens. Unfortunately for him, higher ranking templars have commandeered all available slaves, leaving Teokas without any to perform his responsibilities. Because he has a reputation for past mistakes, Teokas’ superior has threatened him with punishment if he fails in his assigned tasks one more time. Now that he has discovered that there are no slaves available he is becoming desperate. Teokas does have many guards assigned to be overseers of the slaves he is to supervise in this task. There are enough guards that he could assign the work to the guards. However, Teokas has not does so, because the soldiers would certainly be insulted by the task and Teokas is intimidated by the captain of the guards. In a
panic, Teokas orders the soldiers to arrest the nearest citizens and use force to get them to clean out the night soil buckets in the slave pens. Unfortunately for the PCs they are the first people Teokas and his soldiers’ spot.”
Before the invention of artificial fertilizers, a very important problem of agriculture was “soil fatigue”. In primitive period of development civilizations, they were forced to half-migration style of live. To farm the region as long as the land produces crops, then abandon it and find new lands.
First, long-term solution was the flooding of great rivers (eg. Nile). Therefore firsts great civilizations had place close great rivers - peoples had confidence, that in perspective many generations, they will can live here.
Other civilizations still had problem with maintaining the fertility of the soil, even with the use of natural fertilizers. The tired soil in Italy of the late Roman Empire was of very low efficiency. The great innovation in this place was well-thought-out system of crop rotation. Eg. in three-field-system.
What here is imporant for me? Fallow period. City farms or villages with specialists or good priests can have informations, that lands need rest, so fallow period is necesary. This will be the best time to intensive using guano or other natural fertilizers. This can be simple form of crop rotation, in theory available in this level of civilization develop.
Ofc - some persons eg. priests of Silt will instruct the wrong methods
I like concept, that post-magical ash can be repaired by guano. But do this should be more “materialistic process” or “magical”?
Seriously though, I have long thought there should be a Sterilize power… assuming that energy powers do not already do the job.
Any sort of area effect damaging power that kills creatures with 1hd or less that is also partly phased so that it ignores both organic and inorganic barriers (including the body) would effectively sterilize said area.
For example, Brilliant weapons with energy effects can be used to sterilize inorganic surfaces already… (an expensive option, but pre-existing as a precedent, so there is that.)
So, now all we need is a monk with lifeshaped limbs enhanced with the brilliant and flaming effect. Actually, teeeeeeeechnically a lifeshaped creature with monk levels could have its’ entire body enhanced with Brilliant… with all the attendant advantages and disadvantages implied.
One of my actual PC has currently based on his character as a cook. Yeah, he’s a halfling ranger, but it’s RP intensive. Lots of his spices are hidden in his huge load of hair. He regularly helps in approaching important community members with this skill.
To stop using magic for anything, as any answer that refers to magic is automatically invalid, obviously.
The vast majority of Athasians never see or hear of magic outside of scary stories.
Psionics is the mainstay of daily life and would logically have been developed and or evolved to cover everything and anything magic claims to be able to do.
Everyone else is dead, with the notable exceptions of the few remaining magical traditions, mostly hoarded and kept strictly within the practitioners control. And even the so-called benign ones are doubted, mistrusted, and secretly set up for exposure and failure.
(The only safe magic user is a dead - and destroyed past potential of rising as an undead - magic user. )
Evolution alone would dictate that psionics reign supreme in the everyday life and experiences of Athas. The SKs are among the few remaining, having the sheer power to defy the evolutionary pressures that are killing them off… with a few exceptions.
Anyway, back on subject, and speaking of bird poo… how much waste matter is produced by a sorcerer king?
How about waste production per time unit averages per size category?
For a sorcerer king I think it depends on his/her current size in the transformation process…
For player and NPCs there is this I’d imagine it is simply a function of size of the creature and the daily food intake. It can’t be any greater than their daily intake in weight. Assume some of it is “used” in the process and the rest is mixed with water so that amount in = amount out.
For a rough estimate you can use the following:
From PHB
Rations, Trail: Trail rations are compact, dry, high-energy foods suitable for travel, such as jerky, dried fruit, hardtack, and nuts.
Rations, trail (per day) 5 sp 1 lb. note 1
1 These items weigh one-quarter this amount when made for Small characters. Containers for Small characters also carry one-quarter the normal amount.
From the DS3 CS
Though omnivorous, half‐giants are tremendous consumers of water and food. They require twice the amount of food and water than humans. Clothing and equipment need twice the material to construct to fit a half‐giant, leading to higher prices for half‐giants.
So for a city that has 50,000 humanoid residents, it produces 50,000 lbs of waste a day. of the solid variety. Need to put it somewhere… Important job for a low level templar.
Those demographics look about right to me. Actually, they are the absolute minimum to maintain the kinds of societies that are described. TSR always lowballed the numbers because they took the numbers from the early mediaeval period but described the societies as having structures only available to larger scale states.
In deep ancient civilizations ~80-90% populations was farmers (free or slave). 80% for ancient Egypt, who had the best farmlands in this period. In Athas the soil quality is (probably) much lower than in the Nile Basin, so this should be closer to 90%.
Eg. Balic with ~150k townmens should need ~1,35 million farmers. Some part of farmers can be undeads - zombies or skeletons can work on farm, will don’t need food and water, so they products will be in 100% transferred to supply for city. Some races can have higher efficiency in physical work, so also they efficiency as peasants or agral slaves also will be greater.
In ancient as fertilizer used also was ash or potash. Cities still can “produce ash” (as side product), but by small number of wood and other sources of fire - this can be symbolic part of whole, needed fertilizer. But still - traders and aristocrats can buy for own farms, templars requisition to state farms. Villages focused on more imporant (or higher quality) types of food can use this ashes to better effects of work.
But potash… Do we know do Athas have mines or other sources of this type minerals?
I suspect not. A trip to Wikipedia tells me that mined potash is essentially potassium chloride salt, and is separated from sodium chloride using amines, making a great fertilizer, but requiring a fair amount of water and industrial chemistry.
You could just grab salt from a slat flat, but without the separation process, the sodium (aka table) salt would kill your plants first.
